The Homestuck Epilogues
|end = / |length = 88 pages |previous = Credits }}The Homestuck Epilogues is a prose story by Andrew Hussie, Cephied_Variable, and ctset, continuing the storyline of the Homestuck webcomic. The first three chapters of the story debuted on homestuck.com on April 13, 2019, and all remaining pages were uploaded on April 20, 2019. On the website, The Homestuck Epilogues is listed as a separate story from Homestuck and has its own log and description: "Tales of dubious authenticity." Synopsis The story's title page is designed to resemble an entry on the fan fiction website Archive of Our Own, with a list of tags describing the characters and themes that will be featured. There is a prologue, meat path, candy path, and two different postscripts. Prologue *John experiences an ominous dream (in anime) about the black hole in the Furthest Ring permanently killing ghosts and destroying paradox space, and promptly awakens. The date is April 13, and it is his twenty-third birthday. He sees that Rose has been urgently texting him and calls her to find she is suffering from debilitating, overwhelming visions and headaches. Rose asks him to visit her at her apartment. *John arrives at Rose's apartment and discovers she is taking a large number of pills to manage her condition - though she is quick to deny that she has fallen back into substance abuse. She reveals that the Green Sun was destroyed by a black hole, which has stripped Jade of her first guardian powers, and asks John to use his retcon powers to return to canon and defeat . *She explains that there are three types of canon that events can fall into: "inside canon" (the events of Homestuck before the heroes enter Universe C), which is absolutely true; "outside canon" (where Universe C exists), which is conditionally true; and "non-canon," which is absolutely untrue. While the protagonists now reside outside of canon, there are still essential events inside canon that need to occur - like 's defeat - for Earth C to maintain its conditional truth and continue existing. If those events do not happen, Earth C will lose its legitimacy and undergo "dissipation," a process of "forgetting" that will cause the universe to become conceptually unraveled. *John's objective is to load the juju so it can be used against , however he will not receive any help from the other Earth C kids, who lost their ability to influence canon when they entered the victory door. Instead, John must seek out younger, more relevant versions of the kids from a 'dysfunctional' moment in their adventure. Rose gives him a letter with instructions to follow and retires to her bedroom. John then receives a text from Roxy. *At the Carapace Kingdom, Roxy and Calliope have invited John over for a picnic. He and Roxy discuss how the Lalondes' relationship became strained after Rose married Kanaya, but in his thoughts John cannot help but wonder about Roxy and Calliope's ambiguously romantic relationship, and whether Roxy still has any romantic feelings for him. Calliope interrupts to bring up John's mission to defeat (which Rose has only told Calliope, Roxy, and Dirk about), stating that he is free to choose whether or not to go, and she and Roxy will support his decision either way. John struggles to make a decision, becoming overwhelmed with regret for the years he wasted doing nothing on Earth C. Noticing his nervous, sweating appearance, Calliope offers him lunch, giving him a choice between meat and candy. Meat *Treated by the story, as well as by Rose, John and Calliope, as the "canon" path where John chooses to fight . *John goes back to canon and steals a ring of life from Aranea Serket right after she is revived, then gather the kids to fight Caliborn as it happened in the masterpiece. *Vriska is wounded by falling shards of reality and falls into the black hole before seeing the juju in action. *The juju unloads the beta kids, which fight along with the ghost army. gets struck by the Caledfwlch and is thrown into the black hole along with Davepeta. John gets badly wounded from the fight, but seems himself as the only survivor. *Drifting in the abyss, John finds his Dad's wallet and later, Meenah. She steals John's ring of life and is brought to the Candy timeline. *John finds Terezi and the two are happy to see each other. After failing to find for more survivors and patching John's wound, they have a moment together. Terezi gives up looking for Vriska and John brings them back to Earth C, but he doesn't make much further and dies from "cherub poison", a condition Jane could not heal. *Meanwhile Dirk, in the "Candy" path of the Epilogue, committed suicide and in doing so unlocked what has been referred to as powers of "Ultimate Self" that allowed him to take over the story-telling of Homestuck itself, turning the very words of the narrator in the "Meat" path orange while Alternate Calliope battles him for control of the story-telling narrative with her respective red text. *Power beyond God Tier, known as Ultimate Self, is revealed to exist in the Homestuck universe *Karkat is convinced to run for Earth C's presidency against Jane but loses by a landslide due to Dirk's manipulations on the events. *Roxy and Calliope transition, Calliope using they/them pronouns, while Roxy used they/them at first, but soon used he/him pronouns. *Jade is possessed by Alternate Calliope and gains control of the narrative in this path. Dirk shoots a tranquilizer at Jade's body before she can interfere further. After waking, up Jade warns the others Dirk has to be stopped, but he already fled from Earth. *Dave kisses Karkat under Dirk's attemped influence, "canonizing" their relationship. *Ends Alternate Calliope, while wielding Jade's body, consuming 's entire body in a bloody act of vore. Aradia, Calliope, and Dave who has by this point turned into Davebot, proceed to leave this universe for a higher plane of existence. This ending while technically indicated by url to be in the "Meat" path, is actually the ending to the "Candy" path. Candy *Treated by the story, as well as by Rose, John and Calliope, as the "non-canon" path where John chooses not to fight . *Calliope asks John to use his retcon powers for the last time to save Gamzee before he was thrown into Future post-scratch Earth. *Aware of the non-canonicity of this path, Dirk asks Jane to give up her presidency campaign and commits suicide. His death unlocks what has been referred to as powers of "Ultimate Self" that allowed him to take over the story-telling of Homestuck itself in the "Meat" path of the Epilogue. *Power beyond God Tier, known as Ultimate Self, is revealed to exist in the Homestuck universe. *At Dirk's funeral, Aradia and Sollux arrive on Earth. John realizes his retcon powers no longer work. *John and Roxy marry and have a kid. Rose and Kanaya raise a clone of Vriska while Jane, Jake and Gamzee are in a relationship as well Jade, Karkat and Dave. Jane and Jake have a kid. *An alternate timeline Jade crashes into Earth and later reveals to be possessed by Alternate Calliope. *Three years later, many troll ghosts who fell into the black hole arrive into Earth C, creating political instability. Karkat, whom broke from his previous relationship, is leading a troll resistance against Jane's shadow antics. A revived Meenah later joins him. *John and Roxy break up, but the two reconcile years later. *When a failed assassination against Earth's president kills Jane's Dad, she declares war against the trolls and kicks Gamzee out of her spaceship. Jake later leaves Jane and takes their kid. *The Vriska that failed to kill finally arrives on Earth. She briefly enters a black romance with Gamzee but regrets it immediately, fastly murdering Gamzee to stop him from discussing it. *Dave meets Obama at the Oval Office's ruins. Obama reveals to be a Hope player who has been watching everything unfold from afar, and shows Dave a robot body to unlock his Ultimate Self's abilities. *Ends with Rose transcending her body and becoming Rosebot who then travels with Dirk and Terezi (with John's captchalogued body) on a spaceship to a new liveable planet to start a new session of Sburb. This ending while technically indicated by url to be in the "Candy" path, is actually the ending to the "Meat" path. Notes *Andrew Hussie first announced plans for a Homestuck epilogue on April 13, 2016, when he edited his news post about the release of Act 7 to mention that he had ideas for the project, but it would take "a while" to produce. Little information about the epilogue project was made public during the three years between its announcement and release, with the most significant update - on September 14, 2017 - stating that the epilogue would exist "outside the confines of the web story," and Viz Media would be involved in its release. *The process of "dissipation" described by Rose may be related to the cause of Alternate Calliope's timeline being doomed, as both Alt Calliope's lack of contact with the Alpha Kids and the unloaded status of The Treasure mean that Earth C never could have been created. Rose's descriptions of "unraveling" and "conditional existence" reflect the fact that although these timelines shouldn't be possible, they are still given a chance at existence with which to close the time loops necessary for their creation. However, it is implied that Rose's distinction of "outside canon" makes the distinctions of Alpha and Doomed timelines less relevant, perhaps discrediting this connection. *The Homestuck Epilogues have a combined word count of 190,398, adding roughly 23% more words to Homestuck's total count within a single day. For comparison, Homestuck: Act 5 Act 2 is 179,693 words, released over the course of 400 days. *The canonicity of the Epilogue's two paths, "Meat" and "Candy," are heavily implied by the story to be a grey area. The Meat path is treated by the story as the canonical continuation of Homestuck's main story, while the Candy path is treated as the non-canonical path. Simultaneously, events in the Candy path directly lead to outcomes in the Meat path, such as Dirk's death in the Candy path resulting in his rebirth in the Meat path. Additionally, the last page of the Meat path is the story ending of the Candy path, while the last page of the Candy path is the story ending of the Meat path. *Caliborn and Jane's text colors were initially different from their Homestuck counterparts ( to and to , respectively), probably for ease of readability. This was later reverted for consistency. *This is the only adventure on MSPA to not feature proper art, aside from the path icons. *Meat and Candy are both divided under "contents" into eight chapters of epilogues spanning a number of pages each. Category:Homestuck Category:Acts